thoughts (and links) of a retired "social scientist" as he tries to make sense of the world.....

what you get here

This is not a blog which expresses instant opinions on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers as jumping-off points for some reflections about our social endeavours.

So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Courage of Women

By
sheer coincidence, I have been reading these last few days two stunning books
which turned out to have strong similarities in their focus on parts of rural Europe
before and during the second-world war. The underlying message of both is courage
and commitment.

The
first – Eleni - was published in 1983 and is the story of a Greek woman in a mountain village who was executed by
Communist guerrillas in August 1948, one year to the day before the end of the
civil war in Greece which killed 158,000 people. Eleni was not a freedom
fighter, a terrorist or a secret agent – she was a mother who had been trying
to save her children. The tale it tells is the most powerful I have ever read
about those times – and places – unsparing in its analysis of the behaviour of
individuals in exceptional times.

The
book was written by her son Nicolas Gage (who arrived in America at the age of 9
and eventually took up a position as foreign correspondent in Athens from where
he was able to conduct the interviews for the book which). Of course much of
the detail he offers is “invented” – the book straddles the space between
biography and novel and is all the more powerful for that reason. The only equivalent book I know for its sheer power is Oriana Fallaci’s "A Man". Of course, I knew about the bitter struggle in the 1940s for the soul of Greece but have never actually read anything like this before about it.

The
other book – A Wild Herb Soup; the life of a French countrywoman- had been lying unread in the mountain house for almost a year; was published
in 1991 and is the story of a French woman who lived in a small village in the
mountains near the French border with Italy. Her village is thoroughly
agricultural, and for most of her life she knows nothing but the farm.

Her life was harsh - the environment unforgiving. Her mother is struck by lightening at the age of
23 as she works in the fields, and her unread and patriarchal father must raise
his large family alone. Emilie develops into an independent thinker, remarkable
given her surroundings. While education is scoffed at by the farmers books
become an early passion for Emilie.Her intelligence is
recognized by the prefecture, and her teachers persuade her father to accept a
scholarship so that Emilie can continue her education into what we would call
"high school". Emilie's family seems to be singled out by the gods,
as death claims nearly all of her brothers and sisters save one -- and the one
sister is committed to an institution. The sister's husband is irresponsible
drunk, and so Emilie and her father take care of four young ones.
As Emilie continues her education with aspirations of becoming a teacher, her
mind continues to grow. The Great War ends any trust she has in the government
or religion. She realizes the injustice of everything -- the millions of
farmhands dying for the sake of aristocrats in Paris. She remembers a
conversation with her brother (who died on the last day of the Great War), one
that had a profound impact: "You'd see," he'd tell me, "All that
stuff the teacher told us, about patriotism and glory -- well, it's nothing but
nonsense and lies. He had no right to have us sing 'Wave little flag'. What
does it mean, anyway! Can you tell me?" I did not know. I did not see.

And so she becomes a pacifist – the man who became her husband was already an anarchist. The book is a rare testimony to such people. It has encouraged me to pull off my shelves the unread book on the subject - Anarchist Seeds Underneath the Snow.

Each
book gives an amazing sense of what it was like to live in such mountainous
villages a hundred years ago – with their poverty, cold, gossip but occasional
solidarity and beauty. These days we romanticise such places but the spirit of
these extraordinary people needs constant celebration….

I know of only one review of each book – both books deserve so much more although Eleni has been made into a film; and A Wild Herb Soup did become a European best-seller in the 1990s, thanks to its American translator.

Living,
as I now do in summer months in such a (Transylvanian) village, I feel a
particular affection as expressed in this 2 year-old post

One
of the important themes in Geert Mak’s biography of a village is the encroachment of the outside world on tradition and solidarity –
initially through roads; then labour-saving devices; money replacing mutuality;
then television; european legal requirements for livestock; and, finally,
urbanites buying and/or building houses in the village. Other books also cover
this theme - eg Blacker's Along
the Enchanted Way(Transylvania); Alastair McIntosh's Soil and Soul;
and Robin Jenkins' Road to Alto - an
account of peasants, capitalists and the soil in the mountains of souther portugal
(1979). Alto in
Portugal was a self-sufficient economy, with a
stable, sustainable agricultural pattern practiced for centuries. There
were no major disparities, and people helped each other during
the occasional drought. The community didn’t need many external
inputs. This utopia could have gone on forever, but for the coming of a
six-kilometre tarred road. The farmers moved to cash crops and the cash
economy; soon, the village was not producing enough food for itself and became
dependent on external seeds, fertilisers, finance. The middlemen gained the
most from this conversion.
The old socio-economic structure, where everyone had their place and nothing
much ever changed, no longer exists. In its place there is a system in which
any land becomes increasingly seen as a potential source of profit. The old
stability and predictability gone forever, to be replaced by the
competitiveness and the mentality of a gold rush. All because of six
kilometres of tarred road

The
pace of change has been slower in this village where I stay; few outsiders like
me - although my old neighbour pointed out yesterday (as we were returning with
4 hens he had bought in a nearby town of Rasnov) a house which a Frenchman
is apparently restoring.

My acceptance in the village is helped, I’m sure, by my friendship with old
Viciu; and by the fact that I live without ostentation (having kept the
traditional features of the house – and driving a 15 year-old locally-produced
car!!) But you have to get used to a lot of questions – about where you are
going; what you are doing; how much things cost you – and comments about your
sneezing and nocturnal movements! That’s why I laughed out loud at certain
sections of Mak's book which cover these exactly similar features – “people
usually proffered unasked explanations for any action that was out of the
ordinary, for anything that could appear not quite normal. You explained why
you were walking round behind your neighbour’s meadow – “it’s more out of the
wind there”

The painting is one from my collection - an unknown Bulgarian by an unknown painter.

About Me

Can be contacted at bakuron2003@yahoo.co.uk
Political refugee from Thatcher's Britain (or rather Scotland) who has been on the move since 1991. First in central Europe - then from 1999 Central Asia and Caucasus. Working on EU projects - related to building capacity of local and central government. Home base is an old house in the Carpathian mountains and Sofia

about the blog

Writing in my field is done by academics - and gives little help to individuals who are struggling to survive in or change public bureaucracies. Or else it is propoganda drafted by consultants and officials trying to talk up their reforms. And most of it covers work at a national level - whereas most of the worthwhile effort is at a more local level. The restless search for the new dishonours the work we have done in the past. As Zeldin once said - "To have a new vision of the future it is first necessary to have new vision of the past".I therefore started this blog to try to make sense of the organisational endeavours I've been involved in; to see if there are any lessons which can be passed on; to restore a bit of institutional memory and social history - particularly in the endeavour of what used to be known as "social justice". My generation believed that political activity could improve things - that belief is now dead and that cynicism threatens civilisationI also read a lot and wanted to pass on the results of this to those who have neither the time or inclination -as well as my love of painting, particularly the realist 20th century schools of Bulgaria and Belgium.A final motive for the blog is more complicated - and has to do with life and family. Why are we here? What have we done with our life? What is important to us? Not just professional knowledge - but what used to be known, rather sexistically, as "wine, women and song" - for me now in the autumn of my life as wine, books and art....

quotes

“I will act as if what I do makes a difference”
William James 1890.

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas"
JM Keynes (1935)

"We've spent half a century arguing over management methods. If there are solutions to our confusions over government, they lie in democratic not management processes"
JR Saul (1992)

"There are four sorts of worthwhile learning - learning about · oneself
· learning about things
· learning how others see us
· learning how we see others"
E. Schumacher (author of "Small is Beautiful" (1973) and Guide for the Perplexed (1977))

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell, 1950

Followers

der arme Dichter (Carl Spitzweg)

my alter ego

the other site

In 2008 I set up a website in the (vain) hope of developing a dialogue around issues of public administration reform - particularly in transition countries where I have been living and working for the past 26 years. The site is www.freewebs.com/publicadminreform and contains the major papers I have written over the years about my attempts to reform various public organisations in the various roles which I've had - politician; academic/trainer; consultant.